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Letting Art Teach Aesthetics, Math and Language
This papers presents a practical work model as well as an educational theory discussion on the status and potential
of art work in teaching and learning math in early childhood education. The central idea is to let the child’s free
creative art activity reveal, or “teach”, whatever mathematical thinking was inherent in the creative process. Paying
careful attention to art and math adequate language in “meta talks” with children about their art work, is found to
be a rich tool in enhancing the young learner’s development of aesthetic, numeric and linguistic literacies in gainful
interplay. A field study in preschool teacher education is reviewed, including a mapping of Alan Bishop’s [2]
mathematical activities in doing art work, and an interpretation of the work model in line with John Dewey’s [5]
and Gert Biesta’s [1] thinking on art as experience and art as education.